


What You Have Tamed

by Shayvaalski



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Lesbian Irene, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Queer Themes, Rough Sex, Sexual Tension, sebastian moran: minder of highly sensitive people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 18:44:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11973387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayvaalski/pseuds/Shayvaalski
Summary: After Jim dies, Sebastian thinks about going back to India. About walking his battered ass all the way to the Sunderban, and pissing off the biggest tiger he can find. There are a lot of tigers in the Sunderban—tigers who are gods, like Jim had been a god—and they regularly eat men. It’s tempting. It's almost irresistible.After twenty minutes staring at the departures board with his brown hands tight around the straps of his duffel, forged passport in his pocket, he goes to America instead.(A commissioned fic for fivepipsandflowers.tumblr.com!)





	What You Have Tamed

**Author's Note:**

> Violence and mentions of suicide, suicidal ideation, canon-typical cruelty, etc., etc.

 

After Jim dies, Sebastian thinks about going back to India. About  _ walking _ his battered ass all the way to the Sunderban, and pissing off the biggest tiger he can find. There are a lot of tigers in the Sunderban—tigers who are gods, like Jim had been a god—and they regularly eat men. It’s tempting. It's almost irresistible. 

After twenty minutes staring at the departures board with his brown hands tight around the straps of his duffel, forged passport in his pocket, he goes to America instead. 

 

***

 

By the time he lands (by the time he lands it has only been half a day) he has six missed calls from a number he doesn’t recognize, and one from Kate; so the other six must be from Irene. Seb does not expect the surge of blind rage that washes over him as he disembarks, wisps of cold air eeling around the join of airplane into gangway—but when it’s washed away, leaving him thin and tired again, he sees the sense of it. The Woman had been dead, and risen; and Jim is still dead. 

The next time it rings he picks up. 

“Moran.” 

“Ah, good.” Irene’s voice is low and a little rough, and there is too much empathy in it for his tastes. “I only just heard last night, my dear, and—well. I rather thought you might have followed him.”

“No.”

“Where are you? Are you alright—” She cuts off, and Sebastian closes his eyes; and when she speaks again she is gentler. “Of course you’re not. Where are you?”

He looks up at the sign above his head. 

“Logan?”

Silence, and the clicking of keys; a low murmur that must be directed towards Kate, because he doesn’t catch all of it. But then, he didn’t absorb a single second of the inflight movie either, and he’s reasonably sure he had an entire conversation with his seatmate, forgotten even as it was happening—so maybe Irene is talking to him after all. 

“You’re in Boston,” she says, finally, almost businesslike. “You need to get to South Station—the silver line will get you there, follow the signs—and then onto the five oh five a.m. Acela to New York; there’s a ticket waiting for you at the booth. Kate will fetch you from Penn—Bastian? Are you there?”

“I’m here.” 

“Moran,” she says, gentle, “what are you doing on this side of the ocean?” 

“Himself was real clear.” He sounds dull even to himself, dull and flat. “Left instructions for if he kicked it, and some forged documents to get me free and clear. Enough money to buy my way out of just about anything.” Sebastian rubs at his face. “I stayed long enough to tear the web to pieces, then fucked off. What name’s the ticket under? I’m Mohali on the passport—”

“That’s the one.” He can hear her nails tapping against the desk. He does not want to know how she knew. “Get on the train, my dear. I’ll see you in New York.”

 

***

 

 

“Hello, love.” After a day listening to the harsh rhythms of Brooklyn and Boston accents on the train south, Kate’s voice is a relief; so is the plush, quiet car she’s driving. “Hop in. Irene’s getting an early dinner on the table.” 

“She cooks now?” The response comes to him automatically, without having to think; more automatically than getting in the car, with the door on the wrong side, and Sebastian fumbles the handle before sliding in next to her. Kate looks a little older, but not much. 

“She’s always cooked. Just not for you.” She swings out into traffic that is as bad as London traffic. Sebastian swallows, trying to get the taste of travel out of his mouth and failing, and leans back against the seat. Without looking Kate pats his knee. “But not tonight. Your train got in the same time it needed to come out of the oven, so I handed it over to her when I left.” Her smile flashes in the corner of his eye. “She makes a very pretty hostess, with the mood on her.”

He doesn’t smile back, and the expression falls off Kate’s face. 

“I’m sorry, Seb,” she says, finally. Where Irene calls him Moran, or Bastian, keeping a careful and vaguely class-inflected distance between them, Kate has always met him more on his level. “I’m  _ so _ sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

“No.” His voice sounds rough even to him. “No, Katie. You’re already doing everything you can.”

This time when she puts her hand on his knee she leaves it there, and Sebastian lets her leave it. 

 

***

 

 

“Get the door, will you?” 

“Can’t Kate do it?”

“Don’t  _ test _ me, Moran. Anyway, she’s off today.”

Sebastian grunts and settles further into the only couch long enough for his tall frame, pretending absorption in a paperback copy of  _ Call of the Wild _ ; Irene — without taking her eyes off her work — picks up a pillow and swats him. 

He has been here three weeks now, in the room at the top of the house, a short flight of stairs away Kate and Irene’s suite, far away from what Ms. Adler fondly calls  _ the back bedroom, _ where she sees those clients she deems both discreet and wealthy enough to afford her services, even farther from the cozy parlor where they’re sitting now. It’s as nice a flat—as nice an apartment—as the one she’d left behind in London, private and upscale with its own courtyard, high-walled, and a balcony it’s not quite warm enough to sit out on yet. Sebastian has done nothing with his days since he got here except read, and take over the cooking, and his mind is a stubborn blank most of the time. 

The bell rings again, insistent. 

“Bastian.”

“All fucking  _ right.”  _

Irene hasn’t attempted, even, to touch him in anything but the most platonic of fashions, when once Jim had egged them both on, watching her circle him like a tigress, Sebastian on his knees with his hands bound behind his back, thighs wide and braced to keep his balance, following her with his eyes—

He cuts that memory off at the root, and stands up; Irene’s gaze flickers away from him and Seb wonders savage and unhappy what she reads on his face without him knowing. He isn’t sure he would allow her hands on him with that old violence, but he wants her at least to  _ try.  _ Wants to rise and fight beneath her touch, and be beaten down. 

Instead he stalks out of the room, down a short flight of stairs to the foyer, where he presses a button on the intercom and growls, “Yeah?”

“Ah, somebody’s home after all!” The accent punches Sebastian in the gut, a lighter, more Americanized version of the Dublin inflections Jim had worn like a comfortable coat; he has to lean his forehead against the wall before he can respond. This is not the first Irishman he has met in New York, and he will not be the last, and it is past time for Sebastian to  _ man up _ about it. It’s just an accent. That’s all. 

“Seems like it,” he says, at last. “Who’m I speaking to?”

“Name of Altamont.” The man sounds cheerful, friendly, just short of buoyant. “I’m on the hunt for a lass what works here, Cathy or Cathleen or—pretty little thing. Redhead. I’d ask if that was you, only I reckon she sings soprano.” 

Sebastian does not think Kate would give this kind of man her address, but he’s been wrong before and he doesn’t want any part of how Kate—or Irene—conducts her business. “She’s out.” 

“Ah, sure, and isn’t that a shame? Well.” And his tone turns conspiratorial. “Between you and me, I was only hoping she could introduce me to the lady of the house. You know.  _ Miss  _ Irene. You take my drift?”

Sebastian is drawing breath to answer, to take his full name and number, put him off politely until there’s another open house, a private party, invite only—when he stops. Remembers. 

Nobody in New York calls Adler  _ Irene.  _

For a blinding, stupid moment (a moment that sends and carries Sebastian down the last flight of stairs to the front hall, puts his hand on the latch, opens the door) he thinks it must be Jim.  _ Knows _ it can’t be anyone else, because who else would ask for the Woman with her real name, would come to the house where all three of them live quietly if uneasily, would use that accent, would—he gets control of himself before the door is even halfway open. Jim’s dead. He saw the body, even if it was from a distance; and Sebastian knows you do not walk away from a wound like that. 

And the man on the stoop is tall. Much taller than Jim, with the wrong sort of hair, not just color (red) and cut but texture, which you can’t fake—Seb knows—and the wrong sort of build, and his eyes are blue, instead of a brown that had looked tawny in the light, black in shadow—

The man on the stoop is Sherlock Holmes. 

Which is, of course, impossible, and Sebastian is in the middle of shaking himself out whatever fucking dreamworld he’s walking in, conjuring first Jim and now _that_ _bastard_ , when those blue eyes widen and harden, just the tiniest bit. It’s enough. It’s just enough. Seb has spent enough time expecting another dead man to come back to life that it’s not so hard to transfer his unshakeable belief in the possibility of resurrection to this particular corpse; and he takes all his rage and all his grief and cannons it, and his body, into Holmes’ belly. 

They hit the pavement together, and they hit it hard. Sebastian’s breath is ragged in his chest, almost a sob, pulling the scars that run from collarbone to opposite hip, the full-strike of the tiger; and he is a tiger, here, tearing and rending. Even his teeth are hard against Holmes’ shoulder, sinking in until his mouth is full of blood. 

Holmes gives as good as he gets once he’s over the breath being knocked out of his lungs (Sebastian registers distantly that he punches professionally, methodically, like a boxer) but Seb is past caring; he wants to die nearly as much as he wants to kill the man struggling underneath him, and it might as well be like this. Taking Holmes with him. 

Irene and Kate together haul him off, some minutes later; Irene, when Seb catches a glimpse of her face through the blood streaming down his forehead, looks like a storm front about to break. 

“Get up,” she says, as Kate takes over, manhandling Sebastian onto the front steps with the ease of someone used to maneuvering large, half-conscious clients. Kate’s hands press a wad of fabric against the bleeding; he recognizes it as one half of the curtains previously hung in the hall. He’s distantly impressed with her, with the make do and mend spirit of it, and then his head starts to hurt in earnest. 

“I said up.” Irene is not talking to him, he realizes slowly; she is talking to the huddled shape of Sherlock Holmes, curled in against himself on the sidewalk. When he doesn’t move she leans down, grabs his collar, and  _ hauls;  _ then it is stand or be dragged. Irene too knows how to shift unyielding weight. 

Sebastian is unnecessarily pleased to see that Holmes is bleeding too, hair dyed even redder by blood, collar soaked with it, his eye blackened and his movements clearly, painfully stiff. He deserves it. He deserves worse. His own collar jerks against his skin, and Seb realizes he’s lunged against Kate’s grip, trying to get loose and finish the job—Irene’s head turns and if Kate hadn’t already stopped him, Irene’s face would have. There are tears streaming down it, silently, and she is as angry as Sebastian. 

Not just at Holmes. 

“Get him inside.” Her voice is terribly flat. “Patch him up. Then pack his things.” 

“A wise idea,” says Holmes, and turns his head to spit blood. “A pleasure to see you, Irene, even if the circumstances are less than—”

“You too.” 

“Irene—”

_ “Get away from my house.”  _

At that point Kate opens the front door and shoves Sebastian inside. 

“Sit,” she says, and points to the bench in the hall. “Just. Sit. Keep that pressure on. I’ll get your things.”

“I don’t—Katie, hey, what the fuck’s going on? Why’s herself just booting me?”

The door slams, and Irene—still weeping—storms past them both. Kate looks after her with clenched fists for a long moment, clearly wanting to follow, but instead says, “If I had to guess, Seb, I’d say it just tipped over into too much. You  _ shouldn’t _ have jumped him like that, I could have sent him packing instead of you. As if losing Jim wasn’t enough.”

“Don’t fucking talk to me about losing Jim.” 

Kate stands there, chewing on the inside of her mouth, frowning hard. Then she sighs. “I’m sorry. You know I’m sorry. Please just sit.” 

Seb sits. There’s nothing else to do. Sits and waits through the sound of Kate going up the stairs, of doors opening and closing, of raised voices that perhaps he could make out if he tried—Kate’s first, then Irene’s, then a very final-sounding slam. Then silence. Through it he sits, and tastes blood; Sebastian is immobile with misery. He is still alive, and so is Holmes, and Jim is dead. 

Eventually, Kate comes back.

“Here. I think I got everything.” She hands him a clean, damp towel—dark-colored, of course, nearly all the towels in this house are dark-colored or cream—and sets his bag at his feet. “You’re alright for money?”

“Yeah.” Seb will be alright for money as long as he lives. “Katie…”

“I’m sorry.” Kate takes the towel from his hands motionless in his lap, and starts to get the worst of the blood off his face. She actually does sound sorry. “If you give her a little time to cool off—”

Sebastian shakes his head, which hurts. He’s so tired, helplessly tired, the kind that goes down to the bone. Hands already tinged red, Kate makes a soft noise and grips his chin for better purchase.

“You aren’t the only one who lost Jim,” she says, gentle but inarguable. “Irene—well. She’d known him a long time.”

“It’s not the same—”

“No.” Kate sits back on her heels, looking troubled. “She’ll calm down, Seb. It was just—seeing him out there. You know. You must know.”

“No reason to friggin’  _ throw me out  _ over it!”

“Do you believe she’s thinking clearly enough to see that?”

That gives him pause. Sebastian certainly isn’t, but he’s in much worse shape than Irene. He wants, savagely, to hit her or try to—to have her stop him cold mid-lunge, knock him back and down to his knees. Kate must see it, because her fingers tighten, then release. 

“Come back in a week,” she says. “We’ll give it another go.”

 

 

***

 

Sebastian means to find a hostel, he only makes it a handful of blocks out of Irene’s posh neighborhood before he finds a pub—a bar—that looks like a holdout against twenty-dollar cocktails and small-plate appetizers (New York, like London, is a city that is strangely cheek to jowl, familiar and strange) and he’s inside before he can think better of it. Barely anyone looks up, which is a good sign as far as he’s concerned; the only person who gives him more than a passing glance is the rangy butch bartender, and that’s probably only because she’s used to spotting trouble when it walks in. 

He has no intention of being trouble. Not right now. Not just yet. And certainly not here. 

Sebastian lifts his chin at her just a fraction, and is distantly gratified when after a moment she returns the gesture. He doesn’t know what she thinks he is. Another butch, maybe, or just another tall rough thing hoping for peace and quiet. 

When he sits at the bar she doesn’t even bother speaking to him, or waiting for him to speak, just clinks a tumbler of whiskey down, followed by a glass of cheap beer and another jerk of her chin at the scrawled prices. Sebastian puts a fifty down on the bar, then another. They look at each other thoughtfully for a moment. 

“You gonna make me listen to your troubles?” She has as thick a New York accent as he’s heard so far. 

“Nope.”

“Good.” She picks the bills up and tucks them in her back pocket, as he’d meant her to. “I’ll keep ‘em comin’.” 

“‘Preciate it.”

There’s something like a smile on her face. “You’re real polite for such a big motherfucker.”

Sebastian very nearly smiles back. “Yeah.”

“Quiet too. I like that.” And she slides another whiskey over. His first is already empty.

 

 

***

 

After a while, he leaves. It had been late afternoon on the pavement with Sherlock’s body beneath him; now it was night. Sebastian knows he’s too drunk for this—whatever  _ this _ is—but he’s been too drunk to manage before, and managed anyway. He considers, briefly, going back to give Irene a try; and rejects it again almost at once. A hotel. A hotel for the night and he can handle this in the morning, or try to.

Seb is tired in the way he has been tired for weeks now—grindingly tired. Sleep doesn’t seem to touch it but he still needs sleep; he tries to choose single beds when he can, or couches, anything antithetical to Jim’s california king, stupidly, purposefully opulent, with silk sheets and feather pillows. In an extreme he’ll even take the floor, or sleep upright and arms-folded in the tub, which he is always too tall for. 

Not tonight. He needs a real bed tonight, no matter how unsettlingly big it might be. At least, he thinks as he waits at the front desk and eyes the state of the carpets, it’s not going to be anything fancy. 

It’s not. The beds are fulls or doubles, bigger than he’d wanted, but Seb supposes—standing doubtfully in the doorway—that it will have to do. At last, wearily, he turns to close the door, so that at the very least he can have a little bit of peace. 

But in the space between the door and the frame is Sherlock, blue eyes blazing, taking Sebastian’s breath away. All he can see for a shocking moment is Jim, worked up into a fury, chest heaving, breaking wild, inches away from laughter or a roar like a cornered tiger—he gasps a breath and is himself again. This is Holmes, not Moriarty, and he should be somewhere underground. 

Seb will put him there, if he has to. 

“Stop,” says Sherlock, in a rasp. 

And Sebastian stops, mid-lunge. 

“Think.” The voice is low and hoarse and cold, and Seb vibrates in place, caught between impossible rage and exhaustion. “Think, Moran. You’re not unintelligent, no matter what you—or  _ he _ , perhaps—would have had believed.” 

There is no doubt who  _ he  _ refers to. There never is. Sebastian’s eyes flicker over him, then back up, and he can feel his own rage hot beneath his breastbone. 

“You’re looking at the next best thing,” Sherlock says in a drawl nastily like Jim’s. “Let me in, Sebastian.”

Seb considers; and then he punches Sherlock again, once, beautifully, and steps away from the threshold while the man curses and clasps both hands over his bleeding nose. 

“Get in,” says Sebastian. “And be quick about it.”

He’s all but trembling with fury but he also knows, in the pit of him, that this is the only option. That if he doesn’t let Sherlock in it’s a few short steps to being passed out somewhere, stepped over and ignored, sinking further and further into whatever drove him to the tiger the first time; but there is no tiger now. No Indian Forestry Service with its retired elephants to watch when he can’t sleep, no monsoon rain to pound on the roof and soothe him, no distant cousins dragging him to temple and family dinners. The hide is packed away and makes up the greatest part of what’s in his rucksack, and he hasn’t been back to Karnataka since Jim found him there. 

Sherlock jostles him hard in passing, and Sebastian actually sees red; then he slams the door, hard. 

“What the  _ fuck  _ are you doing here.”

“I could ask you the same question, Moran.” 

“I was invited.”

“To the hotel?” Sherlock puts up both eyebrows and Seb considers punching him again. “I’m glad to see I’m not the only one currently in poor standing with the Woman. I take it you wore out your welcome?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Shame. Nice little place she has.” Sherlock prods gingerly at his nose again, peering now into the bathroom mirror. “If you’ve broken my nose I’m going to be  _ very _ put out. But what else can you expect, from a glorified thug—” 

Sebastian knows it will not exactly disprove Holmes but the man just brings it out in him; he grabs Sherlock by one shoulder, spins him without effort, and throws him against the opposite wall. The noise he makes is deeply gratifying, and so is the sound his body produces as it hits—and then Seb has an arm pressed against his throat, all but holding him off the ground by the pressure there. He gives it six or seven full seconds, knowing how seconds stretch into an eternity without air—gives it long enough that Sherlock is struggling for breath, then drops him and backs away. 

“Try again,” Sebastian says, flat.  

Holmes coughs. Rubs his neck, and the two of them stand facing each other for a moment, tension humming like a charge between wires. 

“ _ Is _ it broken?” he asks, finally. 

Sebastian grunts, and then steps forward again. “Lemme see.” He raises his hands to Sherlock’s face, grips his chin, frowning; and then he shakes his head. “No. Shame.” And then he tightens his fingers, hard enough to bruise. “But I can fix that.”

Sherlock jerks away. Sebastian comes after him, helplessly, like diving down a drain. It’s not a big room. He could have afforded a big room but what would have been the point? There was one bed and it took up the whole space and Sherlock corners around it, scrambling, and then over it, those long ridiculous deerlike legs vaulting him half across and then from there cannoning into the door. Coward.  _ Coward.  _

Sebastian is inches behind, knocking a lamp from the side table he uses as a step, clearing the bed; and then he too crashes into a closed door. His hands — his body is reacting faster than his brain now, and less impulsively — slam the deadbolt home and hook the chain in place. 

From the hallway outside he can hear Sherlock gasping. 

 

***

 

“Fuck, Katie, he showed up to my  _ hotel. _ Right on my fucking tail.  _ Right _ on it.”

Kate is holding two coffees; she puts the paler one down by his elbow and keeps the other for herself—no milk, no sugars, a pinch of salt to bring the flavor out. Sebastians picks the sesame seeds off his bagel, moody, until she raps his knuckles lightly with her spoon. 

“Stop sulking and eat, Seb. You have to admit that sounds like his style.” 

“Course it’s his bloody style.” He rubs at his eyes. “But it’s not mine that I didn’t spot him. Didn’t even think to look.”

“You’ve — we’ve all had a lot weighing on us.” 

“I should have hit him harder.”

Kate looks down at her coffee, and at her hands curled around the mug. It’s not a private meeting place by any stretch of the imagination, but they’re still in New York and no one pays them the slightest bit of attention; the hum of conversation covers theirs.

“Yes. You should have.”

“How’s Irene?” Sebastian asks after a while. 

“Better than she might be, I suppose, but it’s been clients at all hours since you left. I haven’t had her to myself for more than a meal.” 

“Kate…” 

“I know.” She lifts her shoulders and then drops them, tilting the top of her hands a little outward in an echo of her shrug, wry. “I  _ am _ planning to talk to her, you needn’t give me that look. She’s my wife, it’s her job — we’ve managed this kind of thing together before and we will again. You’ve got enough to worry about.” 

Kate’s eyes flick sideways, out towards the street, and then she adds, in the same tone and at the same volume, “You  _ do _ know you’re being followed?”

Sebastian sighs, and rubs at the bridge of his nose. “I do now, yeah.” He doesn’t bother turning to look; he’s been tailed before, and if his tail is any good, they’ll be out of sight the instant he glances around. And if they’re not, he doesn’t plan on embarrassing them, not when they’ve already got That Bastard to deal with. “Look, Katie, can we just — have coffee? Talk about… about how shit the trains are? Or something. Whatever you’re doing for fun.” 

“Dick.” She kicks him under the table. And then tells him, in a determinedly cheerful voice, about her knitting circle. 

 

***

 

Halfway home, Sebastian shakes his tail. It doesn’t take the kind of effort he expects, which is almost disappointing; for a few blazing moments he’d been himself again, moving like a panther. The people Jim had sent to follow him — usually kids, usually the younger siblings or children of his employees, getting in practice, but sometimes in the early days an actual member of the web — had been better than this. But then, Jim had been better than this. 

Seb cuts that thought off, and drops lightly down from the fire escape, half a block behind the narrow-hipped girl. He’s given her plenty of time to cast around, scowling at the empty streets; now Sebastian follows  _ her _ , at enough distance and with enough wandering pauses that it’s not obvious — he’s pretty sure it’s not obvious. This isn’t his speciality. He’s too big. But she’s not good at it either, and doesn’t turn around; they go some blocks, down two sidestreets, into the subway, ride five stops,  _ out _ of the subway, a brisk five-minute walk, up the steps of a moderately nice apartment building, and that’s where Sebastian stops her with a hand on her shoulder. She jumps.

“Not your fault,” he says, gruff, and makes a hundred dollar bill appear between his forefingers. “Run along, lass. I’ll take it from here.” 

The girl snatches the money without hesitation; Sebastian thinks, with irritation, that Holmes must have been underpaying her, trading on desperation in order to get what he wanted. Bastard. That  _ bastard.  _ He slams his fist against the door, twice, hard. 

“Enough! You’ve taken long enough about it, haven’t you? Did he go to New  _ Jersey?” _

“I went out for coffee, now let me the fuck in.” Sebastian leaves his fist against the door; he can hear somebody rest his weight against the other side. “And don’t go tracking your girl down, not her fault you can’t pick someone who knows her shit.” He taps two fingers on the frame. “Let me in, Holmes. You wanted me, and here I am.” 

“I didn’t  _ want _ you.” 

“Yeah, you did.” As soon as he says it, Seb knows it’s true, and he makes a rough sound in the back of his throat. “Come on. We’re neither of us stupid—” 

“Ha!”

“I went to Oxford, fuck off. —and both of us know what you’ve been doing. Let me in.” 

Silence. 

“You’re panting after me like a bitch in heat.” Sebastian lets the nastiness eel through his voice, Jim’s nastiness, Jim’s considered idiom, Jim’s easy delighted cruelty, and hears Sherlock’s indrawn breath. “Beats the fuck out of me whether you’re missing the good doctor, or—” 

He leaves it unsaid. On the other side of the door, Sherlock says nothing for a while. Then Seb hears the lock click, the knob turn, and the bolt disengage. 

“Alright then,” he says, gruff, and steps inside. Holmes moves back to give him room. The first-floor flat is nice, and nondescript; the basket of instant coffee and bagged tea on the counter suggests someone renting out their second home. The lack of mess suggests Sherlock’s not been here long—Seb has seen 221B, and he saw it  _ after _ Watson had been at it. 

“Are you quite done?” Sherlock’s voice is all acid, very soft, very cultured. 

“In a minute.” He picks up and puts down a mug, prowling around. It’s easy to invade people’s spaces, insinuate yourself into them and make yourself master; Jim has already done it to Sherlock once or twice already, so all Sebastian needs to do is reinforce the lesson. “Lot to look at. What kind of idiot’s letting you kip in their flat?”

He wanders back towards what he assumes is the bedroom, leaving Sherlock standing in the kitchen, fuming. The duvet is half off the bed, the sheets a tangle, the pillows thrown into a pile, but the floor is clear enough. Clothes thrown over a chair. Shoes kicked into a corner. 

Seb turns, and gets in his first proper look at at Holmes as he stalks back out towards the living room. Holmes is barefoot, in loose gray trousers and a pale blue shirt that matches his water-colored eyes, a dressing gown too big in the shoulders draped around him. And he receives  _ guests _ like this — Sebastian can’t help but compare them. Jim impeccable even at home, shirtsleeves rolled up precisely an inch above his elbows, shoeless in dark socks, the button of his collar undone. 

It makes his hands itch with wanting. Nearly everything Sebastian has goes into not wrapping them around Sherlock’s throat, and even then he ends up clenching them. Which is noticed, of course, but it’s clear that Holmes has no real idea what to do with the information he’s receiving. Jim had said, a hundred years ago, that non-criminal motivation seemed to trip the man up, and the proof is here, in the wrinkle between his eyes. 

“Christ but you’re an idiot,” Sebastian says, almost breathless, when Holmes fails to move. “Fucking  _ come at me,  _ will you, so we can be done with this.”

“Are you possibly that confident I’d be interested in—”

_ “Yes.” _

Sherlock’s mouth snaps shut. “Well then,” he says, stiffly, after a pause. “I suppose there’s no use protesting.” 

“Don’t start that shit.” Sebastian begins to move again, testing the perimeters of the room, fiddling with knickknacks and the pullcords to the blinds. “We’re not gonna play that game. Either you want me me here and I stay, and we see what happens, or you say no and I leave. I’m not the kind of man who—takes.” He laughs, low and rough. “I like my fucks consensual, Holmes.”

Sebastian is savagely delighted by the way color floods Sherlock’s throat and cheeks. He lets that sit a second, then forces his hands open and spreads them, taunting, almost an invitation. There is nothing left to lose. There is nowhere else to go. He might as well face facts, and fling his body towards whatever tiger will take him. 

Holmes’ face is a studied blank until it’s not; until his palms hit Sebastian’s shoulders and drive him back into the wall. Seb gasps, almost a sob, and then groans, head tilting back automatically to show his neck—Sherlock takes this invitation too, his mouth at the line of Sebastian’s jugular, hot as blood. He’s too tall, almost Sebastian’s height, but other than that he is almost achingly familiar. Just as reckless, just as domineering, just as handsy. It’s almost funny. Almost, but Sebastian is too far gone to laugh, half grief and half desire, pressed up against the wall like any first-time teenager. 

“I’m not getting fucked standing,” he gets out, ragged, when Sherlock’s mouth pulls briefly away. “Got my goddamn dignity, don’t I—”

“Keep talking and you won’t get fucked at all,” Sherlock says, and he is all flat behind the eyes in a way that makes Seb’s cock twitch. He’s almost giddy with it, and pushes without thinking, the way he might have pushed Jim when they were both still alive. 

“Rather have my mouth otherwise occupied?”

There’s a short intake of breath from Sherlock, and then he drives his fist into Sebastian’s belly. Seb is half expecting this and relaxes into it, letting his muscles take the blow, sending him sprawling and hard against the wall. 

“Come on,” he says, soft, vicious. “Again.” 

After that it’s an inevitability. The bed — rumpled as it is — is very soft, the kind of bed you buy for guest rooms and hotels, with high-thread-count sheets (Sebastian, his face pressed into them, notices this kind of thing) and a duvet too nice for the way Sherlock’s been treating it. At first, once they’re finally on it — by this time Sherlock’s mouth is bleeding from an accidental knock from Sebastian’s elbow — they just scrabble at each other, hands grabbing indiscriminate at flesh and clothing, but after the first wild heave puts Seb on top, shirt rucked up enough to show his ribs, Sherlock puts his palms against Sebastian’s belly and Seb knows this is it, no way back now. 

His hands slide up. The shirt comes off. 

“Those are  _ very _ pretty,” Sherlock says in that affected upper-class voice, and trails his fingers over the raised, shiny-pale scars that run from Sebastian’s left shoulder to just below his ribs on the right. His dark skin has other marks, but none as appalling — and obvious — as these. “But the stories about them can’t possibly be true. Did Moriarty put them on you, or did you come with them? Army incident? Drunken stunt?” 

“It was a tiger,” Seb says, breath still coming fast; and he can all but smell her still, the vivid burnt-orange of her hurtling toward him, the green-gold eyes alight with rage. “Bandipur. I was with the Forestry Service. Got the hide to prove it. You can fuck right off.” 

He shifts his weight a little against Sherlock’s hips and as expected they are _miles_ away from the topic of his scars almost instantly. Jim had been hungry for them; but Sherlock is easy to distract. All it takes is that little shift forwards against his cock and Holmes arches up, almost painfully rough between Sebastian’s legs. That’s alright. Sebastian likes the hurt of it, the way Holmes reaches for him, knots a hand in his hair and drags him sideways-down, teeth suddenly hard against his mouth. 

It’s barely a kiss. Sherlock tastes like blood, and cold air, and Seb forces himself to stop fucking  _ thinking  _ already—if he thinks too much he’ll have to stop, overwhelmed by the familiar/unfamiliar body against his, so instead he manages to get a hand between them and hooked into Sherlock’s waistband. Sherlock rolls him, managing to get in another solid thump against his ribs without ever taking his mouth away, but Seb has been dealing with a lithe eel of a man for five years and he won’t be had this easily. He works Sherlock’s gray trousers off his hip, single-minded, gets his other hand free and jerks them down so that Sherlock’s cock is separate from his by one less layer of fabric. Holmes makes a deep noise and pulls away enough to struggle all the way free — Sebastian’s been fucked by men with their pants around their ankles before but once enough and he’s obscurely pleased — before he gets a hand under one of Seb’s knees and presses it up against his chest. 

Seb catches his breath, then writhes a little against the bed, showing his ass and the hard bulge of his cock to their best advantage, bending his other knee himself, foot on the bed to not lose his balance. 

“Not gonna get far with my jeans still on,” he says, and wriggles again, then arches up, taunting. “Lemme go, Holmes.” 

Something in Sherlock’s face or eyes flashes dark. He reaches for Sebastian’s belt instead with his free hand, undoes it and the button and the zip, and roughly yanks at the waistband. Jeans and pants come off together and now it’s Seb who’s half-trapped, tangled in his own clothes, and Sherlock moves  _ fast, _ lunging forward. His body weight holds Sebastian’s knee—knees, now, and it’s a good thing he’s flexible—against his chest, one hand knotted again into Seb’s hair, the other —

The other. Sebastian laughs, almost soundless, and tilts his head as far back as it will go, straining against the hold Sherlock has on him, tries to bear down; but Sherlock has him thoroughly pinned. His hands are free, though, and his arms are long enough to reach Sherlock’s hip, and from his hip his cock—it’s awkward but not impossible. Holmes gasps, fingers slipping away from Sebastian’s ass—condom, thinks Seb, the man has  _ got _ to have condoms here somewhere, and if not, well, there’s always one in Sebastian’s wallet, regularly renewed—and slumps a little, grip loosening, so that Seb is holding up his weight. Sebastian lets him enjoy it, briefly, before heaving upwards, tossing Sherlock to the side, and sitting up in order to work off his trousers. 

For a few seconds it’s almost normal, Holmes settling back on his heels to pull off his shirt while Sebastian tosses his clothes into a corner, but once both of them are more or less naked it becomes electric again, the tension ratcheting up until it’s unbearable. Neither of them move but Sherlock looks  _ incandescent _ —and Sebastian starts to worry, in the back of his mind, that in a few minutes he’ll be out on his ass again, this time in a far more compromising position. 

Then Sherlock knocks him down, and after that Seb’s brain more or less shuts itself off. This is simple; hissed syllables, rough readjustments, until their bodies are pressed against each other all down their lengths. Sebastian wasn’t stupid enough to throw his jeans far enough away that he can’t lean down, after a quarter hour or so, and dig his wallet out of one pocket. 

“Here,” he says, and tosses it to Sherlock. The man plucks it out of the air—and Christ, his fingers—barks a laugh, and uses his teeth to rip it open. Seb can  _ feel _ his cock throb, and has to step himself from rolling his eyes at his own reactions; instead he lies there propped up on his elbows, watching. It’s worth watching. Holmes has a quick efficient way about him, and it carries through even to rolling on a condom, his attention focused and intent on himself for those few seconds, until he looks up and glares at Sebastian. 

“Lie back,” he says—almost snaps. Seb shoves at him with one foot. 

“Don’t you fucking play like you’re not enjoying this—” 

“Will you just  _ lie back _ , idiot. Did you run your mouth like this with James?” With one hand against his shoulder he presses Sebastian down. 

“All the goddamn time,” Sebastian drawls, smug; he’s rubbing it in, even knowing that he’s in an eminently vulnerable position and even though it hurts, that he’d had Jim all to himself. Entirely his. No matter how fixated on Holmes he’d been at the close. 

“Careless,” says Sherlock, clipped, and transfers his hand to Sebastian’s leg, pressing it up again to his chest. Seb wets his lower lip and goes still. “Now do us both a favor, Moran, and think of England.”

There’s maybe a ghost of smile over Sherlock’s face; but after that Seb isn’t in much of a state to notice anything. 

 

***

 

When Sebastian wakes up it’s to the sound of his phone ringing. It takes a few seconds to orient himself; there’s a horrible beat where he registers the curve of a pale back next to him and it’s like being home again until Sherlock’s ludicrously dyed hair comes into focus and the feeling passes. He rolls over, savoring the strain in his thighs, the bruises on his rib, and fishes the mobile out of his trouser pocket. There’s just enough light in the room to show that morning is on its way.

Two missed calls from Kate show on the screen. As he’s holding it the ringtone starts off again, so Seb scrambles out of bed, snagging his clothes from the floor and taking them with him into the bathroom. 

“Get down here,” says Kate before he can say anything. Sebastian drags his jeans on, phone tucked between chin and shoulder. 

“Am I forgiven?” 

She makes a noise, and repeats, “Just get down here. Quick as you like.” 

“I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

He can almost hear her frown. “No, Sebastian. I mean I’m outside the hotel. Come downstairs. Bring your bags.” 

So he  _ is _ forgiven. That’s a relief — Irene’s temper never flares as hot as Jim’s had, but it burns longer, and Sebastian had wondered if it might be wise to find another flight. Get further west. 

“I’m not at the hotel. Tell her I’m coming, I’ll meet you there.” Seb checks his reflection and wrinkles his nose, then splashes water on his face. 

“You’re not at the—” Kate checks herself. Sebastian doesn’t like the tenor of the brief silence, doesn’t like the way he can hear her reaching conclusions during it, but she doesn’t let him speak, just says urgent and careful, “You need to leave—wherever you are. Now.”

“Or what, Irene’ll fucking throw me out again?” He keeps his voice low. “I’m glad she’s come around, Katie, but I’m not at her beck and call.” 

“Not at hers, no. Seb—” 

And he understands. 

He has to sit down. The rim of the tub is cold and too narrow and he clings to it. 

“Seb. Hey. Are you with me?”

“Right here.” 

“Address.” 

He gives it to her, numb, and after a pause she says, “When you leave the house turn right. I’ll meet you somewhere along the street, near the first intersection. We’ll pick your bags up later. You got that?”

“Got it.” 

Kate hangs up. Sebastian gets dressed automatically; he’s missing a sock but he pulls his boots on anyway, then finds it tangled with his shirt. It’s not worth getting it on so he stuffs it in his pocket. Everything that came into the house came into the bathroom with him, so Seb turns to the window. It’s a ground floor flat; he’s had worse drops, and the only trouble comes from getting his broad shoulders through the frame. But he manages, half-falling into a tiny back garden with no direct access to the street — instead Sebastian has to vault the fence, pick his way through someone’s raised beds, and climb another fence into an alley. Once he’s on the main road he moves fast, shedding his protective coloration in the early morning light in order to get as far away as possible, going at almost a dead run; and the intersection is there before he knows it. Seb stands there, considering whether to keep going, until the choice is taken from him by the same sleek black car that had picked him up from the station. 

“In you get,” Kate says, so Sebastian gets in. It’s the easiest, and only, thing to do. 

 

***

 

On the long drive back to Irene’s house they barely speak, though Kate puts her hand on Seb’s knee the way she had before and keeps it there. Even that much contact is almost too much for the way Sebastian is vibrating with a kind of baffled anger, but she doesn’t take it away and he doesn’t ask her to. It’s the only thing keeping him in his seat. When she finally has to move her hand to shift into park he’s out of the car before it even stops moving, his movements jerky and half-arrested and desperate. 

“Seb!” Kate’s shout brings him up short, trembling, used to obedience, wires all crossed; a moment later she’s in front of him, reaching up to smooth his hair and tug his shirt into place. “Hush,” she says, softly. “You’re alright. Take a deep breath. It’s just shock, Seb.” 

Every place where Holmes had touched him feels like a brand; he lets Kate gentle him, hold his shoulders until his breath evens out. Then he takes her wrists, draws them down until he’s standing on his own, and lets her go. 

“Thanks,” Sebastian says, gruff. “Walk in with me?”

Kate smiles. “I’ll be your honor guard. Come on.” 

He half-expects Irene to open the door for them but Kate unlocks it herself, and leads him through the entry hall, up the short flight of stairs, down a corridor and into the bright little kitchen, where Irene is sitting with a cup of tea looked stunned and Jim is standing up, and smiling, and looking Sebastian square in the face. 

“You  _ bastard,”  _ says Seb, hoarsely, and only Kate’s hand on his elbow keeps him from lunging forward. 

“Oh do set him loose, Katie, it’s more fun that way,” drawls Jim, and Sebastian’s whole body reacts to it. He is going to  _ murder _ Jim, right here and now on the pretty tile floor; and Jim must see the idea flash across his face because he laughs, lilting, and closes the gap between them. 

His fingers are on Seb’s collarbone. Then he is striking Seb, so hard he sees stars, and it is a relief and a blessing and god fucking  _ damn  _ how did he do it. 

“Boss—” 

Jim rests his thumb against Sebastian’s lower lip, possessive. There is nothing and no one in the room but him, and Seb could die now and be content. 

“I can’t leave you alone for a moment, can I?” Jim says, and pulls him in. 


End file.
